


How Does Your Garden Grow?

by cat_77



Category: In Plain Sight
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-23
Updated: 2011-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:38:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The witness was safe.  Now on to more important issues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Does Your Garden Grow?

She woke up to the smell of dark roast: a little bit bitter for her taste, but she swore she could feel the wafts of steam against her skin. “Coffee?” she groaned hopefully.

“Not any time soon,” Marshall said, and there was a hint of regret in his tone.

She pried open her eyes to try to glare at him, and found him holding a plain white cup in her direction instead. “Ice chips?” she guessed.

He nodded. “Doctor’s orders. Soothes the throat and provides needed moisture, a necessary thing in a place as dry and antiseptic as a place like this.”

She readily took the spoonful he held out and let them melt against her tongue before crunching away the last of them. They felt good, but she was not about to tell him that. “You know what would go good with these?” she mused around another mouthful. She took his expectant eyebrow raise as permission to continue, “Coffee.”

He shrugged and offered her a sip, propping her up with a hand on her back until she sank back with a blissful sigh. “That never happened,” he warned her.

“Pushover,” she accused, the taste still hot on her tongue.

“Eat your ice chips,” he countered, offering her another spoonful before setting them to the side.

She let these melt longer than the last before she asked, “How bad?”

Marshall rolled the coffee cup between his hands for a moment, contemplating its depths, before he asked, “Did you want the good news first or the bad news?”

Mary looked around the hospital room, took in the various monitors and bags of fluids she was currently attached to, and had a feeling she already knew the answer to at least one of them, but answered, “Good,” anyway.

Marshall leaned forward in his chair and, with his usual seriousness, began, “Went straight through, in and out with minimal damage to actual organs. Missy is safe and transferred to a new location with new marshals to be present twenty-four hours a day until the trial. Oh, and you get all the recuperation time and medical care you need paid for by the extremely grateful U.S. Government.”

Mary nodded and tried to shrug, knowing exactly where the wound was by the spike in pain. Witness was safe, which was a bonus and kind of the whole point of her heroic rescue. The whiney little brat was transferred to another team, which was even better. And the U.S. Government better the hell pay for this crap or she would nag McQueen until he wrote the check himself. “And bad?” she asked with a wince.

Her facial expression was mirrored by her partner as he said, “You have an awful case of bed-head that your mother wants to help you with, and your favorite leather jacket will never be the same again.”

“Damn it,” she pouted, pushing back into the pillows as she huffed up at the ceiling. She turned her head and swore she felt the knots vying for championship against her scalp. “You’re obsessed with hair care, can’t you talk her out of it?”

“I tried,” he insisted. “She told me I’m not permitted to do anything that would aggravate myself or yourself, and though she did not directly threaten me with anything, she’s a Shannon like you, so I was suitably cowed.”

She tried to cross her arms in front of her and ended up pulling on the I.V. line instead. “Wimp,” she told him.

“Likely, yes,” he agreed. He took another sip of his coffee and she was pretty sure it was just to spite her.

She pouted, some more, until she finally asked, “My jacket?”

“I tried to convince him it was sacrificed in the line of duty and, as such, another should be appropriated for you but, alas, no luck as of yet,” Marshall said with a shrug.

“So,” she sighed, itching her nose with the back of her hand until she remembered, oh yeah, I.V. in the way. “What’s with all the flowers?”

The bedside table had been appropriated for several vases, and there were even two or three decent sized arrangements over on the window sill. They varied from tiny things with little pink and purple buds to huge monstrosities that threatened to both fall over and spew pollen everywhere if so much as looked at wrong. She was fairly certain that the one with the price tag still attached was from the new big boss lady who probably assigned someone else to write the check as she could not be bothered to herself, but still wanted to seem like she cared. She liked the one with the smiley-faced balloon best – she could either pop it and make some noise to relieve the tension, or make a small slit and get high off of the helium if things threatened to get too boring.

“Flowers are traditionally gifted to those who are ill or injured, or who have committed great deeds,” Marshall intoned in his best lecture voice. “There are apparently several people who feel you meet both of those requirements.”

She made a face to let him know what she thought of that, but he continued anyway with, “The largest arrangement is Missy and her fiancé Ron. They wanted you to know their gratitude before they were shipped off away from more mob hit men and talked their new watchers into, well, arranging this for you. The second largest is from the revered Stan McQueen who would like you to know your work is appreciated and, also, that we managed to finagle an extra few bucks into the budget this year.”

“Who’s the balloon from?” she asked, getting ahead of herself. She noticed he skipped over the one with the price tag and assumed her suspicions were confirmed.

“That would be from your sister, with a note attached regarding your options should you become too bored for words. The azaleas to the side are from your mother, as is the note stating we are to keep you away from the balloon,” Marshall explained.

“And the others?” she asked, fighting a yawn. She just woke up; it was not fair that she was so tired already.

“The silk arrangement is from Raphael, who assures me only the best fake flowers will do. He’s convinced you are just going to kill them anyway, so he might as well head that off at the pass. The final arrangement is from a certain F.B.I Agent Faber. They’re alive, but he assures me they do not have to be for you to still enjoy them,” Marshall said with a hint of a grin.

Mary gave into the yawn, but managed to ask, “And you? Other than contraband coffee, what are you good for?”

At that, the grin grew wider. He pulled something off the chair next to him that had been hidden just below her line of sight. When she saw it, she was torn between rolling her eyes or smiling herself. She settled for both as he offered it to her with a nonchalant shrug and a, “I appear to have some time on my hands for the near future. There may be more.”

She took the folded paper lightly between her hands and resolutely did not marvel at the little origami flowers or the tiny paper vase they resided in. She ran her fingertip over one of the plain white petals and noticed her partner’s familiar scrawl peeking out of an elaborate series of folds. “Marshall?” she asked, wondering if he had left a shopping list inside her gift. All the flowers seemed to have writing on them though, and she didn’t think he was quite that anal, despite her usual accusations.

He looked down at his coffee for a moment before admitting, “They’re IOUs. One for every time you’ve saved my life or put your life at risk for my own.” He cleared his throat and added, “I may have been feeling sappily sentimental. I will try to ensure that it never happens again.”

She nodded, knowing she wore an incredulous expression on her face. It was sweet, even she could see that. She wondered just how much he hadn’t told her about everything that happened; how long he had sat in that parking lot holding her while her blood mingled with his and dripped onto his ridiculously shiny shoes, what she must have looked like to give him that hint of panic that was still in his eyes, and why the cheesy little calendar in the room told her it was three days past the last day she remembered.

She set the makeshift flowers and pot to the side and tried to give him a wry look, knowing he would see through it anyway and she would not have to voice any of the thoughts in her head. Having the same partner for so long had its advantages, after all. “I think you’re missing a few flowers,” she told him in mock seriousness.

He smiled, but quickly hid the action. “I will have to remedy that in the copious amount free time I now apparently have at my disposal,” he assured her.

“You do that,” she agreed, sparing another glance at the gift before sinking into the too flat pillow, bed head and all. Anything else she was going to say was interrupted by the sound of two familiar voices echoing down the hallway. To call it bickering would be an understatement. To call it amusing would be as well.

She turned a questioning look to her partner who explained, “It would appear that the esteemed Mr. Faber and the esteemed Mr. Ramirez have differing opinions on several matters.” He pushed himself up from his chair to stand, leaning heavily on the cane at his side as he shuffled closer to the bed for a moment to whisper, “I’d say I leave you in their generous care, but recommend you feign sleep for maximum enjoyment.”

“Might not be feigning,” she admitted, feeling her eyelids grow far too heavy. She blinked to try to keep awake a little while longer, but found he had already reached the door.

“Even better,” he told her. She watched him limp out into the hallway, and heard the reassuring drawl easily lie, “She was conscious, but she’s asleep again. Wake her at your own peril.”

She let her eyes drift back to the flowers that littered the room, coming to rest on the paper bundle at her side for a moment before finding something even more inviting. With a glance to the door to verify Mike and Raph were still arguing over who was more likely to wake her first, she quickly downed the last of Marshall’s coffee that he had left behind and replaced the cup on the small table.

Warm and as comfortable as she could be with a body currently serving as a battlefield between morphine and a massive hole ripped through her abdomen, she settled back and prepared to drift of to the dulcet tones of generosity and caring, or, to be more precise, two men bitching over who knew best for her while they thought she was too dead to the world to hear a thing. Just before she gave in to sleep, she wondered who she should work on first for a new jacket.


End file.
